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Register a new userThe thermally-unstable warm neutral medium: key for modeling the interstellar medium
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Snezana Stanimirovic
Publication date
2010
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We present 21-cm absorption measurements towards 12 radio continuum sources with previously identified thermally-unstable warm neutral medium (WNM). These observations were obtained with the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) and were complemented with the HI emission spectra obtained with the Arecibo Observatory. Out of 12 sources, HI absorption was detected along 5 lines of sight (seven new absorption features in total), resulting in a detection rate of ~42%. While our observations are sensitive to the WNM with a spin temperature T_s<3000 K, we detected only two wide absorption lines with T_s=400-900 K. These temperatures lie above the range allowed for the cold neutral medium (CNM) by the thermal equilbrium models and signify the thermally unstable WNM. Several absorption features have an optical depth of only a few x10^{-3}. While this is close or lower than what is theoretically expected for the CNM, we show that these weak lines are important for constraining the fraction of the thermally unstable WNM. Our observations demonstrate that, for the first time, high bandpass stability can be achieved with the VLA, allowing detection of absorption lines with a peak optical depth of ~10^{-3}.
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The transition from the diffuse warm neutral medium (WNM) to the dense cold neutral medium (CNM) is what set the initial conditions to the formation of molecular clouds. The properties of the turbulent cascade in the WNM, essential to describe this radiative condensation process, have remained elusive in part due to the difficulty to map out the structure and kinematics of each H I thermal phases. Here we present an analysis of a 21 cm hyper-spectral data cube from the GHIGLS HI survey where the contribution of the WNM is extracted using ROHSA, a Gaussian decomposition tool that includes spatial regularization. The distance and volume of the WNM emission is estimated using 3D dust extinction map information. The thermal and turbulent contributions to the Doppler line width of the WNM were disentangled using two techniques, one based on the statistical properties of the column density and centroid velocity fields, and another on the relative motions of CNM structures as a probe of turbulent motions. We found that the volume of WNM sampled here, located at the outer edge of the Local Bubble, shows thermal properties in accordance with expected values for heating and cooling processes typical of the Solar neighbourhood. The WNM has the properties of sub/trans-sonic turbulence, with a turbulent Mach number at the largest scale probed here (l = 130 pc) of Ms = 0.87 +- 0.15, a density contrast of 0.6 +- 0.2, and velocity and density power spectra compatible with k-11/3. The low Mach number of the WNM provides dynamical conditions that allows the condensation mode of thermal instability (TI) to grow freely and form CNM structures, as predicted by theory.
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